Sunday Scuttlebutt: ragtag rumors and Red Wings cap math

We've reached the point of the hockey season where sideways glances and rumors begin to wane amidst Stanley Cup Finals burn-out (see the ten articles from ten journalists pondering whether the Blackhawks need to split up Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews), but the relative desert of early June offers a few useful tidbits of information, including this worrisome insinuation from the Toronto Sun's Steve Simmons:

June 6, Toronto Sun: The NHL’s new general manager of the year award doesn’t have a name for
two reasons: 1. The NHL is planning to rename a bunch of its trophies
(James Norris to Bobby Orr, etc.) and will include the GM award with
them; 2. The obvious name, the Sam Pollock Award, wrankles some hockey
people who didn’t care for what they thought was Pollock’s condescending
ways. So if that’s the case, it rules out the Glen Sather Award,
because after all, he basically invented condescension.

So how does that work, then? Does the Jack Adams Award get recast under the no-less-merciless guise of Scotty Bowman? Renaming the Lester B. Pearson Award after someone known for not being the moniker of Toronto's international airport made sense, but Cecil Hart and James Norris aren't exactly slouches.

We'll find out whether Simmons has the inside track, or whether he's making something up again, in a few weeks, at the NHL Awards in Las Vegas (on June 23rd)...

Speaking of the merciless Jack Adams, the Edmonton Journal's Jim Matheson spoke to one-time Red Wings goaltender Glenn Hall about his contractual wars with Adams and his resulting trade to Chicago, and you don't need to adjust numbers for inflation to understand what a hard bargain Adams gave his players:

June 6, Edmonton Journal: Hall made $6,000 his first NHL season in Detroit, all of $89 a game
for the 70 league games, and $900 went into a pension that was supposed
to pay the players $10 a month when they hit 45. The Wings kept him on
starvation wages until dealing him to Chicago in 1957, along with
Terrible Ted Lindsay, for goalie Hank Bassen and current Toronto coach
Ron Wilson's uncle John.

Hall's greatest days were in Chicago --
one Stanley Cup, two later trips to the final and five first-team
all-star berths in his 10 years there after Hall and Wings GM Jack Adams
agreed to disagree on his worth.

"I made the mistake of telling
Adams to go screw himself ... he didn't think I could play goal. I guess
you should never tell your boss off," said Hall, who says he was
treated better in Chicago. "When I first went to Chicago, I was
asking for $11,500 a year and Tommy (GM Ivan) said, 'Holy Crow.' I
told Tommy, 'Jesus, I made the first all-star team the year before.
Doesn't that count?'

"Tommy said, 'Yeah ... but the Wings didn't
want you.' I said, 'OK, Tommy, but I thought the Hawks did?' Tommy
says, 'We do, we do. But not for that kind of money.' '

Also of monetary note, from the Boston Globe's Fluto Shinzawa:

June 5, Boston Globe: Because the collective bargaining agreement will expire on Sept. 15,
2011, a hard cap is in place for 2010-11, meaning all bonuses must be
applied under the ceiling. If the NHLPA votes to extend the CBA by one
year into 2011-12, the bonus cushion (7.5 percent of the upper limit)
will come back into play. The players have grumbled about escrow
concerns under the current CBA.

In other words, the veteran bonus clauses which allow teams to spice up contracts for both veterans and rookies doesn't exist until the NHLPA agrees to extend the CBA, which they will--eventually...

In the less tangible variety, from Shinzawa:

June 6, Boston Globe: On the laundry list of tests at the NHL combine, a simple side-to-side jump is not included. One Western Conference scout described a test his team uses in which players jump from side to side over a stick for a minute. The players who recorded the most jumps were usually the best skaters who could combine power with speed and balance. Teams look at vertical jump and long jump as measures of skating power at the combine....With Steve Yzerman entering the managerial ranks, the Red Wings legend becomes the center of the GM All-Star Team. The rest of the lineup: Joe Nieuwendyk (LW), Paul Holmgren (RW), Doug Wilson (D), Bob Murray (D), and Garth Snow (G) .

The New York Times' Jeff Z. Klein and Stu Hackel also offer up an article discussing the supposed lessons learned by the media, and of course, by fans, over this past NHL season, and their first observation should include Captain Obvious's seal of approval:

June 6, New York Times: Television ratings, news media interest and revenue have grown steadily over the past three years, despite difficulties in the economy at large. Game 2 of the Blackhawks-Flyers series on NBC attracted 5.89 million viewers, the largest American audience for an N.H.L. game since records were first kept in 1975.

The common thread: traditional cities. The last three Stanley Cup finals have involved Detroit, Pittsburgh, Chicago and Philadelphia, all northern cities with deep hockey roots, and this postseason’s strong TV ratings and merchandise sales were boosted by strong runs in Montreal and Boston. In contrast, Cup victories by Tampa Bay, Carolina and Anaheim in the mid-2000s did little to attract audiences either in the Sun Belt or in hockey’s traditional northern strongholds.

This spring’s upsurge in fan interest coincided with an almost total absence of playoff teams from the N.H.L.’s financially troubled Southern tier. Of the nine teams in that group, only Nashville, Phoenix and Los Angeles reached the postseason, and all were gone after one round.

The N.H.L. can work in warmer climates, like Washington and San Jose. But the last three seasons have shown that the N.H.L. does best when its teams in Canada and the northern United States dominate.

To Nicklas Lidstrom, who re-signed with the Red Wings for one year and $6.2 million, and drew criticism from some fans for not going a little easier on the salary cap. Hey, let's be glad he wasn't offering a hometown discount, or he might be in Sweden.

The Edmonton Journal's Matheson argues that Lidstrom and Tomas Holmstrom's decisions to take less money to remain with Detroit involve an equation with one answer: #44:

June 6, Edmonton Journal: Detroit defenceman Nick Lidstrom took a $1.2-million haircut and Wings
forward Tomas Holmstrom just signed for $350,000 less than he made last
year, so, by my figuring, that adds up to about what the Wings will be
paying Todd Bertuzzi to come back for another year. Detroit is letting
defenceman Bret Lebda walk as an unrestricted free agent.

Most definitely, and both Derek Meech and Andreas Lilja might "walk" because the Wings seem to want more bite at the #6 defenseman's position if they can find it.

Regarding the other player with extensive time spent in Detroit, Matheson offers a novel solution:

Tampa GM Steve Yzerman has lured Detroit pro scout Pat Verbeek to the
Lightning and indications are he will likely hire capologist Ryan Martin
from his former team as well. Wonder if Kirk Maltby would be interested
in Verbeek's job if the Wings don't want to re-sign him?

Finally, Matheson points out that a certain former Red Wings goalie seems to want to give Chris Chelios a run for his money:

With Dominik Hasek refusing to hang up his pads after leaving the NHL
two years ago, his eligibility for the Hockey Hall of Fame keeps getting
pushed back. He is rumoured to be signing with Moscow Spartak for next
season, which means he won't come eligible for the HHOF until 2014 (if
he retires after next year), three years after his last game for a
European team. The same thing happened with Theoren Fleury, who played
in Belfast in 2005-2006, and Valeri Kamensky, who left the New Jersey
Devils to play two years in Voskresensk, outside Moscow. Moscow Spartak
has put on the full-court press on the 45-year-old goalie, who left the
NHL in 2008, saying he had nothing left in the tank to play in that
league. They will likely sign him for $3 million for one season.

Not rumored. Hasek's taking part in a press conference at 12 PM Moscow time on Monday to announce his signing.

And, for the record, the Port Huron Times-Herald's Mike Connell talks about the casino gaming partnership between Marian Ilitch and some gent named Mike Malik as it involves Port Huron. There's no relation between me and this Michael J. Malik, Sr. My Maliks are descended from farmers, line-workers, and a drunk Minister of Education of the Austria-Hungary Empire whose dalliance with a maid saved him from the post-WWI purge.